By Mike Corasaniti

Game: 2013 World Series
Location: St. Louis, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan
Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 – Thursday, October 31, 2013
Teams: St. Louis Cardinals, Detroit Tigers

How Detroit gets there

Lineups are still not going to want to face Max Scherzer just because his loss column has been soiled. Scherzer has struck out nearly 150 batters with an ERA around 3.00 for a half-season that any elite starter would drool over. Add in Justin Verlander and Anibal Sanchez to the mix and it just gets ridiculous to even consider betting against this team in a 7-game series.

The offense is of course what gets all the attention, and for good reason. Even forgetting the fact that Miguel Cabrera may win another Triple Crown, the Tigers are tops in the league in almost every offensive category. First in batting average, second in runs and on-base percentage, and third in slugging percentage will help a lineup cruise to another division title and keep it going through the ups and downs of October.

What also helps Detroit is the fact that it seems very unlikely that any team will challenge them for the AL Central title. Cleveland is the most promising but it still has the Dog Days left to prove that it's not just a June darling. Granted, their lead over the Indians is not a substantial one at the time of the All-Star Break, but they have been down before. It will be easier to put faith into the Indians when they go back five or six games in the division and then make a comeback themselves.

How St. Louis gets there

It's surprising to see the offensive numbers St. Louis has put up and think that Detroit has been the only ones making the front pages and cover stories for their power. Few teams are better than St. Louis right now in terms of productivity. Five key players (with first baseman Matt Adams being included on that list) are hitting above .300 as of the All-Star Break with very few inclinations that things are going to slow down. 

The Cardinals are winning games and fighting for division leads with their bats just as much as Detroit is. And their rotation led by 12-game winner Adam Wainwright and 11-game winner Lance Lynn is as feared as anyone's right now.

Is it possible that Pittsburgh will make the race for the division exciting into the later September weeks? Of course, but they are still on the earlier end of their comeback. Even with a division throne to sit on, the Pirates will still have to get through the likes of Cincinnati, Arizona, Atlanta, or even Washington come October, which they have not yet proven they are capable of doing.

But you know who has proven themselves time and time and again now? St. Louis. And even if they do end up having to play a one-game lottery Wild Card against Cincinnati or Los Angeles or whoever, St. Louis has proven this season and in the last few that they only need a foot in the door to make it all the way.

The Matchup

It was ten years ago now that Miguel Cabrera burst onto the scene to help ignite the Florida Marlins to their second World Series. The amazing thing about the then 20-year-old Cabrera's season was how natural it seemed. From his walk-off home run in the very first game in June to the crushing power against the likes of Roger Clemens and the Yankees in six games, Cabrera did it with ease. 

With an even better offensive cast supporting him in 2013, the third baseman from Venezuela is a few October at bats away from staking his claim as an all-time great. A year removed from the highs of a historical Triple Crown and MVP season and the lows of being the final out of a World Series sweep, it is hard to bet against Detroit, Cabrera, and the surrounding crew.

The Cardinals will make it an exciting series, unlike the last time the two saw each other in 2005. With their offense being no stranger to power or clutch so far this season, the pitching staff (which is proving to be one of the best top-to-bottom crews of '13) will do a number on the Tigers line-up that they won't be seeing among the likes of their division rivals for the rest of the season.

With backup from fellow starters and the lineup, Wainwright can easily pitch two gems and lead St. Louis to its third title in two years. But all Miguel Cabrera needs is an above average week and a half and the October demons he has been working to forget for a year will be more than long gone.

Prediction

Tigers in 6

All too often, events drawing on two completely different aspects of the sports hemisphere–scandal and championships, Lance Armstrong's seven stripped titles and Game 7 of the NLCS–combine to create the great binary of sports.

By Mike Corasaniti

Two inevitable situations crossed Monday in the sports world. One event was exciting and full of potential for something classic, while the other was truly unfortunate and at times, downright embarrassing.

The National League pennant was decided after the NLCS’s Game 7 between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants. As MLB’s own Twitter account quaintly put it yesterday afternoon, “There will be a group of grown men pouring champagne on each other tonight.”

No matter what happened, no matter who won or lost the decisive game in California last night, there was celebration, champagne and the excitement for what was to come next.

Earlier yesterday morning, the Lance Armstrong Steroid Saga, and its years of accusations and dragging on, finally met its bitter, awkward end. As if they really needed to wait this long to execute the mounting evidence against him, the International Cycling Union, thanks to assistance from the USADA, officially stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles.

No matter what happened, no matter who officially came out on top in these court cases and investigations, there was not going to be any celebration, champagne or excitement for what was to come next.

At the very least, now we all have a little bit of closure. But what hurts the most about the Armstrong situation is the American standpoint of the scandal.

“This is a landmark day for cycling,” said Pat McQuaid, president of the cycling union in a statement. What stood as the downfall of one of the greatest American conquests in sports history is, to the rest of the world, “a landmark day.”

But that just goes to show the binary that can be so present in sports. Two unrelated stories in two unrelated sports could have such similarly resounding effects on its fans and critics. With one of the few similarities coming from the Game 7 and the seven stripped titles being that they broke on the same day, it can be amazing what we take from such stories in sports.

From the Giants and Cardinals, all we were looking for was a winner. Who would be crowned king of the National League and deemed worthy of facing Detroit for a world championship?

But with Armstrong, it seemed that all people were interested in was the loser. Would the union fall to the power of Lance and his incredible power? Or, probably more popularly towards the end, would Armstrong be stripped of everything that gave his fans reason to cheer for his incredible run?

Again though, that’s just the binary. Sometimes sports can literally lift you out of your seats while a few hours later it can break your heart. The most amazing part of it is how rarely those two feelings are separated. Baseball is about to enter its newest chapter of championship history while cycling is in the midst of its darkest days.

But it’s in that binary that fans should focus their allegiances. To some people, the steroid scandal of Lance Armstrong will go down as the top story of Oct. 22, 2012, while ignoring the dramatic meeting between two teams who simply refused to quit this postseason. But in looking at the binary, the contrasts and the yin and yang of sports, the scandal should always take a back seat when the champagne is flowing. 


This column can be seen in The Daily Campus

By Mike Corasaniti

As a Mets fan, I will be the first to admit that the idea of a second Wild Card team initially sounded appealing to me. I mean hey, the idea of fewer teams not making the playoffs definitely helped New York’s chances.

And when July hit, I will admit that I was still a fan. The Mets were not dominating anyone, but they were sticking around the top of their division, and with an additional playoff spot, it seemed that sticking around the top was all the team would need.

So I will admit that maybe I am a little hypocritical when I say that as soon as the Mets let their season go to waste, I realized just how ridiculous baseball’s new Wild Card format really is.

How in the world can a league with six months of play, where games are played at least six out of seven days a week, let the playoffs for some teams end after three hours? It’s heartbreaking.

“It breaks your heart. [Baseball] is designed to break your heart,” said Bart Giamatti, the seventh commissioner of Major League Baseball and a man that is much smarter than I. Giamatti was of course discussing how baseball lines up with seasons (with its blossoming coinciding with spring’s and its ending coming around the time of the first snow) and the new Wild Card game; but he may as well have been.

The most heartbreaking situation this year had to indeed come from the Atlanta Brave’s Wild Card match-up with the St. Louis Cardinals. Take away the fact the Cardinals deserved to win the game, take away the ridiculous infield fly call, take away my hatred for the Atlanta Braves, and you have an 88-74 team moving on to the next round of the playoffs past a 94-68 team. That’s heartbreaking.

Let’s look at playoff situations for some of the other sports leagues. In the NFL, teams face single elimination throughout the playoffs after a regular season of only 16 games, making the playoffs last as long as – for a team eliminated after one game – about six percent of the regular season. Compare this to the NBA and NHL, which both have 82-game seasons (in a world where lockouts don’t exist). Playoffs could end for a team after four games, or about five percent of the regular season.

The Major League Baseball season lasts for 162 three-hour games. That means for two teams under the new Wild Card rule, the playoffs last 0.6 percent as long as the regular season. So the question of how to fix the current system then goes to the question of whether or not expanding the one-game Wild Card series to three or five games would be a solution. But then things get complicated with over-resting the other teams and the whole idea goes out the window. Which, if it did, would also be heartbreaking.

Because in theory, allowing more teams into the playoffs is a terrific idea. It keeps more teams and their fans excited about August and September baseball, given the fact that there are simply more teams eligible for a playoff spot. But to get more fan bases excited for months before the playoffs, just to rip everything away after possibly less than a three-hour fluke of a game? Well, I guess that would be baseball. And if that happened to my Mets, that would break my heart. 



This article can be seen in The Daily Campus